Move a tenant in without a phone call

Before anybody arrives: describe the house once

Everything a new tenant will ask is entered once, per house, and every tenant after that gets it themselves. This is the part worth doing properly, because it is the part you never do again.

1. In the dashboard, open Properties and choose Add a property. Say what kind it is: a studio sets up one unit, a house or HMO asks for its rooms. Name the rooms the way the tenancy agreements do, so nobody has to guess whether Room 2 is the one at the back.
2. Set the bins: which containers the council collects, on which day, and whether they alternate. The rota builds itself from this, and it rotates by room rather than by name, so it keeps working as people come and go.
3. Fill in the house information: the Wi-Fi, door and key-safe codes, who to contact for what, how the heating works, parking, and any appliance with a knack to it. Codes and passwords are hidden until tapped, and can be copied without being shown.
4. Record where the fire extinguisher, fire blanket and first-aid kit are, with a photo of each, and the evacuation steps for the building. These sit on an emergency screen that works with no signal and no sign-in.

Issue the join code

A join code is how a tenant proves they were invited. It is six characters, never contains 0, 1, O or I, and only one is live at a time: issuing a new one stops the old one working. It is shown to you once, because only a fingerprint of it is kept, so take it before you leave the page.

1. Open the property and choose Issue a join code.
2. Choose Print a welcome sheet if the tenant is arriving in person. It is one A4 page: a QR code, the code in text beneath it, and nothing else. No address, no property name, so it is safe on a kitchen wall where anybody walking past can read it.
3. Or send the link. The code travels as https://rimeroo.com/join/?c=YOURCODE, which you can text or email. On a phone with the app it opens straight on the join screen; on one without, it copies the code and sends them to the right store.
4. On the move, the Rimeroo app does the same: Manage, then the property, shows the join code and its QR on the spot.

What the tenant does

They scan the QR or tap the link, sign in with a code sent to their email, and pick their room. That is the entire process on their side. There is no account to be set up for them and no password to be sent.

If you would rather approve each resident before they are in, switch that on for the property. Their claim on the room then waits for you, and the dashboard and the app both show it: choose Approve and they are in. Until then they can see nothing about the house.

Day one, without you

The moment they are in, the tenant's phone shows the house as it stands: the Wi-Fi and the door code, who to ring and when, how the heating works, which bins go out this week and whose turn it is, and their own room's place in the rota, with reminders the evening before and on collection morning. The emergency screen is a swipe away and needs no signal.

If something is wrong, they report it from the same app, with a photo and how urgent it is. You are told: a notification on your phone if you have the app, an email if you do not. The report, its photo and everything said about it live in one place that both of you can see, and the other residents cannot.

When somebody moves out

The room stays; the person leaves. That one idea is what stops a move-out from becoming a rebuild.

1. Open the property, find the room, and choose End tenancy. Their access ends. The room keeps its place in the rota, and whoever takes it next inherits the turn.
2. Issue a new join code. The old one is already dead, but a fresh one is what the next tenant will use, and it means nothing passed around by a former resident can be used again.
3. Change the door code and any key-safe code, and update the house information to match. Every remaining resident sees the new code on their phone; nobody has to be texted.
4. Do not delete the house, and do not rebuild the rota. The house information is the same house, the open repairs are still open, and the year of completed turns is still the record of who did what.

Good to know

• Residents pay nothing, and never will. The plan is yours; the app is theirs.
• Housemates do not see each other's surnames or email addresses, and nothing about the house reaches a resident who has left.
• A resident cannot take a room by mistake if you have turned approval on, and cannot post to the house or end anybody's tenancy whatever is turned on. Those are yours.